I am a Horrible Human Being

Morning Friends! It has been awhile since I wrote a complete nonsense post and as such now that I have some nonsense to talk about I thought it was high time. I am a horrible human being. Like I realize that is a big blanket statement but I will attempt to explain WHY I am a horrible human being. First there are some key elements that you need to understand for this story to work. This is Josie rolled into a ball sleeping on the box beside me during the work day. She is a mess, but a delightful one. As a ringtail breed as I understand them… she will pretty much be permanently in a state of extended kittenhood. She plays with everything and has a grand ole time doing it. She is also EXTREMELY precocious and figures out ways to get into pretty much everything. She wakes us up on the weekends by trying to running across us, attacking the rug at the foot of the bed or attempting to climb the curtains. Let me reiterate… she is a mess but we love her greatly.

Another key bit of information that is important for this story to make any sense is the fact that my wife has no depth perception. I don’t mean this is a funny “ha ha” sort of way stating that she is bad at catch, but instead in a very literal sense. She was born without her eyes fused together and while she spent much of her childhood going through an arduous path of attempts to make them fuse… it never quite happened. There are some truly adorable photos of her as a child sporting an eyepatch, mischievous grin and adorable curls… and I can’t revel in just how stinking cute she was because it is a traumatic experience. It took me until recently to understand some of her behavior like her reluctance to use drive throughs or to gas up her own car. These are both things I do for her generally, but never understood why until she finally explained some twenty years after marriage that she cannot figure out where she is in relation to the drive through or the gas pump.

The next bit of information that you need to understand is what a “Roly Polly” is, which admitted gets called by a bunch of names depending on the region you grew up in. I think more collectively they are known as pill bugs. One of the first things we learn as a child is that they roll up into a ball as a defensive mechanism (or to preserve moisture in periods of dryness). It is fun of course to flick a rolypolies and watch it go rolling across the ground. We have a partially collapsed ductwork through our concrete foundation and as a result the odd random smol bug finds its way into our house. Generally speaking I leave Rolypolies alone because they are obviously lost if they made it inside but occasionally I will just open the bedroom door and set them outside so they can find a better climate.

Now that you have all of the key bits of information we will move on with this story. I had gotten up and showered and was getting dressed when my wife was in the bathroom. Josie has this habit of obsessively staying in the bedroom with us as we get ready, and she was apparently stalking something in the adjacent bathroom. My wife proclaimed that she thought there was a bug on the floor and I of course asked what kind. She wasn’t sure and that lead me to come into the room and upon seeing it I immediately said it was just a rolypolie and not a big deal. She doubted me because she said it didn’t look like a rolypolie… because again no depth perception she just saw a flattened black thing on the ground. So without thinking I reached down and gave the bug a little flick… it rolled up into a ball and skidded across the room.

Remember that Josie is extremely precocious. She immediately grasped what had happened and proceeded to start batting the rolypolie around the bathroom floor. I am a horrible human being because I taught a cat how to torture a poor little bug. At some point she lost track of it and we proceeded to quietly open the back door and rescue the poor thing. However I am absolutely certain that Josie is not going to bop every single bug to see if it rolls into a ball and can be made into a “more funner” toy. I’ve given her a bit of information she did not need to know because up until now she had mostly just quietly followed bugs around the house out of curiosity. I just taught her that they can also be really fun toys.

4 thoughts on “I am a Horrible Human Being”

  1. Our cat Zuzu is a ringtail that was a rescue from California. I had never seen this type of tail before he came into our lives. It is interesting to hear that Josie is very similar in behavior to our Zuzu. He is always getting into something and has mastered opening bifold closet doors. No closet is safe from his frequent inspections and he is now working on figuring out how to open the cupboard doors in our bathroom.

  2. Our boy, Barnabas likes to sit in the front door looking out at the world through the glass of the storm door. My wife says he’s looking for birds or chipmunks, I say he’s protecting us from the zombie apocalypse. Potatoe Potato. He will sit there for hours. So my wife made a little sign for him that we stick to the glass. It says

    Hi!

    My name is Barnabas,

    Will you be my friend.

    Our hope is someone will see it and him, and get a little laugh.

  3. I grew up in a house that never had fewer than three cats in it. It also had countless woodlice (which is what those little creatures are called where I come from). Woodlice are both harmless and relatively cute. They don’t seem to trigger most peoples’ antipathy to insect-like creatures, probably because they move slowly and predictably and have no obvious, threatening mouth parts or stingers (or indeed any non-obvious ones for that matter). Consequently we never really did anything about them. They just wandered about and everyone ignored them, including the cats. Given there was always a cat willing to chase and frequently eat anything that moved I’m guessing woodlice were just too slow to catch their interest as amusement and too distateful to hunt down for snacks. It’ll be interesting to see if Josie maintains an interest. I’d bet she doesn’t.

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